I looked up this old thread in the course of researching the Sharp / Karpeles Appalachian collection, and thought I should clear up a couple of points. Some way up above, my good friend John Minear wrote:

"In the early 1950's Maud Karpeles made a return trip to the Southern Appalachians to see if she could find any of the singers that she and Cecil Sharp had visited earlier. This time she took a recording machine. She found Lizzie Roberts and recorded her singing "Black is the Color"...

This is an incorrect statement and I would like to clear up my mistake. Maud Karpeles recorded Emma Hensley (Mrs. Donald Shelton) of Carmen, N.C. singing Lizzie Roberts' version of "Black is the Color" in the 1950s. This is on the Folktrax 908 CD. I say that this is Lizzie Roberts' version, that is in Sharp's collection. It looks the same to me.

I've corresponded with Mike Yates on this point, and you were right the first time, John. The track listings on that Folktrax release are inaccurate. It was Lizzie Roberts that MK recorded singing 'Black is the Colour' when she went back to Hot Springs in 1950 - we know this because she makes reference in her own account to Ms. Roberts' acquisition of a harmonium with which she accompanied the song, "completely spoiling the lovely tune." On the Folktrax release you can hear her sing it both with and without the harmonium - the defiantly major-key accompaniment sounds almost comically strange, if you're used to the unaccompanied version.

The Folktrax track listing for this album is all over the place, I'm afraid. It lists Emma Shelton both under her married name, and her maiden name of Hensley, and incorrectly attributes several tracks. Tracks 1, 2 and 19 - all credited to 'Emma Hensley' seem to be Lizzie Roberts. Track 20 ('Dear Companion') is credited to 'Ella (sic) Shelton', but is almost certainly Emma Shelton-Hensley, since the song as sung is identical to that Cecil Sharp collected from her mother Rosa. On the same grounds I would say the attribution of tracks 24 and 25 to Emma Shelton is correct, and the spoken piece (#22) describing her running away from the school that Sharp had assisted her to attend is definitely Emma too.

But what of tracks 14, 15 and 16, all attributed to 'Emma Hensley'? To me the voice here sounds harsher than the singer of the songs we can confirm as Emma's. Also, the version of 'Gypsy Laddie' at #14 is almost identical to that sung to Sharp by Becky Mitchell of Burnsville, NC, in September 1918, whereas this ballad doesn't appear anywhere else in the (quite extensive) Hensley family repertoire - and neither did the two 'jigs' at #15 and #16, come to that. I suspect that this is a different singer, but I suppose you'd have to go to the original recordings or Karpeles' diaries to be certain who it is.

Oh, and I would guess that the fiddle tunes at #3, yet again credited to Emma, are the work of her husband Donald Shelton, who contributes several other fiddle pieces. What a shambles!